Never Mine
by Alexis C
Summary: Some secrets are better left undiscovered.


Disclaimer: None of the characters featured here are mine.

This is one of thirty entries that I will hopefully be churning out for the 30 Kisses LJ community.Many thanks to Rociel for beta-ing this and all my other fics for me!

**Never Mine  
By Alexis C.**

The soft impassioned cries behind the solid wooden door froze him in his tracks.

Wide-eyed, Schuldig remained perfectly still, his hand just inches away from the door knob.

"Yohji... god, Yohji...!"

It wasn't his imagination.

There_ were_ noises coming from the room. And he could sense Yohji in there. Yohji, who was reacting very strongly to someone else.

Someone who wasn't him.

Schuldig clenched his fists, dark jealousy twisting his insides and making him feel positively ill. He could feel his anger flushing across his cheeks, the heat spreading slowly and surely through his entire being.

Yohji was in there with a woman.

A _woman_.

Some shameless hussy was inside their room right now having sex with Yohji in their bed in Schuldig's absence.

And Schuldig had thought that he would be the one having problems with commitment when they had first decided to start taking their relationship seriously.

How dare he... How dare Yohji take all the sacrifices they had made for each other, all that Schuldig had done for him, and belittle all they had this way?

How could he toss everything that they had created together so casually away with a simple fling?

The dark raging jealousy turned to cold blinding fury at the thought of the extent of Yohji's betrayal.

Yohji had given them up for a moment of physical respite.

He was going to shoot him. He was going to shoot her. He was going to kill both of them. Damn them for the adulterous pair that they were, damn him... and at this point, Schuldig realised he was biting down so hard on his lip that there was a trickle of blood running down his chin.

Each successive cry from the bedroom was like a bare blade inching its way into his chest and gorging his heart out.

He hadn't known how much Yohji had meant to him.

Fuck Yohji. Fuck Yohji and his philandering ways. Fuck Yohji for doing this to him.

With these thoughts and more churning in his head, Schuldig slammed his way into the room, ready to catch his lover in the arms of another woman.

The sight that greeted him was therefore, not entirely expected.

Schuldig blinked confusedly at Yohji's startled expression.

The room was devoid of any human presence but Yohji's and his own.

The sheets were neatly laid out on the bed, untouched and picture perfect in their neatness. There was no evidence or sign of any debauchery of any sort.

Yohji was immaculately dressed for once, and not a single strand of hair was out of the place. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his emerald eyes filled with confusion and... was that guilt?

"Where is she!" Schuldig demanded, stalking through the room, and flinging open their wardrobe doors, fully aware that he sounded like a crazed lover.

There was no one there.

"Schuldig... I thought you wouldn't be back until tomorrow."

Again, with the guilt. Yohji was practically radiating the emotion.

Schuldig stormed over to Yohji and grabbed the front of his shirt.

"Where. Is. She?" He ground out through clenched teeth.

Something was amiss and he didn't know what. It infuriated him. There was obviously no one else in the room now but him and Yohji. Yet, Yohji was definitely guilty about something. And he had sensed Yohji responding to someone...

"There's no one here but you and me, Schu. You should know," Yohji told him, his eyes darting to the side evasively.

And then realisation struck.

He had sensed Yohji responding to someone or something. He hadn't actually sensed anyone else.

Confused, he turned to look at the silent black monitor behind them.

"Yohji..." Schuldig began incredulously.

"Were you... watching porn?

Yohji blanched.

"... without me?"

Yohji laughed nervously, as he tugged his fingers through his hair awkwardly. As Sculdig continued staring disbelievingly at him, Yohji closed his eyes and ran his fingers along the length of the lapels of Schuldig's leather coat. He leant his head against Schuldig's chest, and Schuldig automatically wound his arms around Yohji's shoulders, silently acceding to Yohji's request for intimate contact as his anger rapidly dissipated.

Confused as he was, it was clear to him that Yohji wasn't, in fact, cheating on him.

Finally, Yohji turned his pleading gaze up to meet Schuldig's.

"You were gone for a week. I was lonely," he whispered huskily.

The thrill that went down Schuldig's back silenced any further questions the telepath was about to ask.

Wordlessly, he pressed his lips to Yohji's, pushing the other man backwards, as they devoured the taste of each other hungrily.

It had been a whole week of abstinence.

Surely, he shouldn't be surprised if Yohji did dig into his stash of porn to satisfy his needs...

It wasn't entirely unexpected, after all.

Pushing all thoughts out of his mind, Schuldig proceeded to concentrate on kissing Yohji breathless.

The warm flood of pleasure tingling through Yohji's body pleased Schuldig.

"I missed you too," Schuldig finally admitted, a little reluctantly. "I thought about you all the time. When I thought that you were cheating on me... I wanted... to kill you."

He looked down in surprise at Yohji as his lover's slender fingers caressed his cheek lovingly.

"That," Yohji told him, seriously. "Is the single most romantic thing you have ever said to me."

Then he burst out laughing.

"You big dumb jealous telepath," he teased.

Sculdig growled playfully and tackled Yohji. He pressed Yohji flat against the bed, fully intending to make up for lost time together with extremely pleasurable and passionate sex.

The wince on Yohji's face, therefore, surprised him.

"What?" He queried immediately, worried.

"No, it's nothing," Yohji replied with a quick reassuring smile, one that was too earnest to be entirely convincingly.

What the hell was going on?

Schuldig slipped his hand beneath Yohji's back, where he sensed the source of his lover's discomfort was.

He saw the panic on Yohji's face, as his fingers closed upon a hard rectangular object.

"What..?" He began, as he pulled it out, only to have Yohji snatch it abruptly from his questing fingers.

It was a compact black little radio cassette player.

"It's nothing, nothing at all..." Yohji hurriedly explained. His growing anxiety was almost palpable in the tense silence of the room. "I was just listening to some old tapes earlier."

Why was Yohji getting so worked up over an old tape?

Schuldig didn't want to probe his lover's mind, but he knew he couldn't leave things as they were either.

It just wasn't in his nature.

Still, he watched silently as Yohji hurriedly yanked opened the nearest bedside drawer and all but stuffed the machine with its apparently offending tape inside.

"Let's just carry on, shall we?" Yohji implored, and the smile on his face was almost painful to look at.

Schuldig acquiesced without a second word, moving rapidly to lay his claim on Yohji once again and to have Yohji lay claim to him too.

He knew that this was not the end of the matter though.

* * *

In the dark stillness of the night, Schuldig slipped out between the cool sheets and padded over to the TV.

Just as he had thought.

The power switches weren't even turned on.

Yohji hadn't been watching porn just now. Why then, did he lie that he had?

Come to think of it, that voice he'd heard had been calling Yohji's name.

Schuldig frowned, unease settling heavily upon his heart.

Yohji was hiding something something from him.

And Schuldig didn't like that at all.

He turned as he heard Yohji stir in bed.

"Schu?" Yohji's sleep-infused voice queried.

"Yeah," Schuldig replied quietly, the gears in his head turning.

"Come back to bed. It's cold without you," Yohji said and the loneliness and yearning in his tone was evident.

He could never deny Yohji anything. Schuldig turned and went back to bed.

As he crawled back among the sheets, Yohji drew him close and snuggled against him.

He could sense Yohji's fear, his insecurity and the pounding of his heart as if he'd just awoken from a bad dream, as Yohji held him tightly.

"Yohji?" He murmured questioningly.

There was a momentary silence as Yohji's breathing finally slowed.

"Don't leave me, Schuldig. Don't ever leave me."

The impassioned plea caught him off guard.

Silently, Schuldig nodded his assent.

_Don't leave me._ He thought in Yohji's head as he pressed a kiss to his lover's forehead.

_Don't leave me._

He felt rather than heard Yohji's reply.

* * *

The cassette player was not where Yohji had left it last night.

Schuldig scowled, as he regarded the empty drawer with great displeasure.

This could only mean that Yohji thought it was important enough to wake up in the middle of the night to hide it from Schuldig.

What was that again about having no secrets between them?

Schuldig growled low in his throat as he began yanking open drawers and rifling through their contents.

He was going to find out what was in that cassette tape. There was no question of it at all.

Yohji wasn't going to be back until night fall. That gave him more than enough time to find that damned radio cassette player.

* * *

It was three whole hours later when Schuldig finally pried the player out from its hiding place.

Yohji had hidden it well.

It was, without a doubt, something that Yohji did not ever want Schuldig to find.

Schuldig frowned, as he turned the obsolete piece of machinery around in his hands several times.

He wasn't going to like what was in here, he was sure of it.

But he wasn't about to have Yohji keeping secrets from him after all that talk a few months back about being completely open with each other.

Still, he couldn't help being slightly uncomfortable about going through his lover's belongings.

He really had changed, hadn't he?

A few years ago, he would have had no qualms about this obvious invasion of privacy.

Well, Yohji wasn't being open with him and so he had to find out what was going on, didn't he?

Fuck this, he had a right to find out what his lover was hiding from him, damn it.

Wiping all other doubts from his mind, Schuldig hit the play button on the radio-cassette player.

Immediately, he heard the sharp desperate gasping of a woman's cries of passion.

"Yohji... Yohji, please... Yohji!"

Once again, the fury unfurled within him.

Who the hell was this bitch and what was Yohji doing listening to this thing when he already had Schuldig!

He glared at the cassette player furiously, willing it to erupt into flames and die a fiery death with the intensity of his hatred.

Was Yohji cheating on him then? But why would he be so stupid as to record this? It was sick and disgusting and it left a nasty taste in Schuldig's mouth.

His grip tightened around the ugly thing almost uncontrollably and he imagined that it was this woman's throat that he had his hands wrapped around now. The sharp angles of the player bit into his hand, as he gripped it tightly, and he could see that his hands were trembling ever so slightly as he held on to the machine.

And then, it hit him like a bolt of lightening from clear open skies.

The voice became painfully familiar and it was at this point in time that Schuldig wished he had never found this, wished that he had never come home to catch Yohji listening to this.

He was listening to the voice of a dead woman.

A woman who hadn't existed for the past ten years or more.

Asuka.

The one love of Yohji's life. The woman who had spoilt him for all other women.

Schuldig felt sick to his stomach as he stared at the innocuous-looking machine in his hands.

Her voice was so uncannily like Neu's that he had identified her easily enough.

The player fell from his numb fingers and clattered noisily to the floor.

And still it continued playing.

"Don't leave me, Asuka. Don't leave me."

The exact same words that Yohji had whispered to him last night.

Yohji had never ever forgotten her.

Schuldig had never been able to replace her.

Yohji had hidden it well, hidden it so deeply, Schuldig hadn't suspected that he was still so caught up in the memories of the past.

The tape cut there and it began playing dead noise as Schuldig's back connected sharply with the wall he had steadily been backing up against.  
Don't leave me.

God.

He had only been a substitute for Asuka, hadn't he?

Why hadn't he seen this? Why hadn't he detected this earlier.

He clutched wildly at his chest at the crushing, devouring ache there.

16th October. Time. 8pm. The target has just entered the building, Yohji's voice whispered in the silence of the room.

Schuldig's gaze fell unwillingly again to the black item in the middle of the floor.

Are you ready, Schuldig heard Yohji whisper in hushed tones.

I'm ready, came the feminine reply.

... Was this?

Schuldig reached out and grabbed the cassette player. He jabbed the fast forward button, and the tape squealed, a high pitched annoying sound, as he scrolled through furiously, stopping every now and then to check its contents.

I love you, Yohji, she said, and then he could hear her fading footsteps and Yohji's pained gasps as he tried to stop her, heard his pained cry as he fell heavily to the ground.

The three cracking shots that shattered Yohji's world.

The three cracking shots that would finally shatter ihis/i world.

Schuldig abruptly stopped the tape.

He was shaking so badly, he could hardly hold on to the player.

Yohji hadn't betrayed him.

He'd betrayed Asuka's memory by sleeping with Schuldig. He'd betrayed his love for her with his far milder passion for Schuldig.

Schuldig had always been the third party.

Schuldig had never felt so ill in his life.

He hit the rewind button and waited as the gears of the mechanical contraption began whirling.

He had to do this.

He had to remove all traces of her from their life or Yohji would never truly be his.

He needed to wipe her from Yohji's mind permanently.

It didn't matter what it cost him.

He couldn't share Yohji with her, he couldn't let her keep Yohji from the grave.

Yohji was his.

His and his alone.

Schuldig stared at the little red record button his finger was hovering above.

A gentle pressure and she would be gone. A clean sweep of Yohji's mind and he could remove her.

He had the power.

He could do this.

Schuldig sat back on his heels as the player began to erase the only thing Yohji had left of Asuka away.

* * *

Schuldig closed his eyes as he pressed his forehead to the door and clenched his fists.

It was happening again.

Empty promises. Every single one of them.

Silently, he fell to his knees, as the voice echoed in his head once again.

He stared blearily at the wall in front of him as a little part of him died again.

It was always going to be like this.

That day, when he'd hit the stop button on the player bare seconds after he'd pressed the record button, it had been decided.

He would always share Yohji with a dead woman.

And it had been his choice.

Schuldig wound his arms tightly around himself as he stared bleakily before him.

**The End.**


End file.
